


Le doigt dans l'œil

by Partnachklamm



Series: The Fourth Sin [2]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, Jealousy, M/M, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2020-07-20 15:33:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19994539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Partnachklamm/pseuds/Partnachklamm
Summary: In moments like these, Sugawara really wishes he could just stop overthinking straight to ruin.





	1. Chapter 1

1\. 

He hears her before he sees her.

Bells, gleaming against wind. It's a voice that carries and collects the hopeless: escaping sighs, rosy ears and cheeks that heat at unworthiness, at a chance, at a moment to witness a note of beauty. She is a warbling charity.

Akino Mei sounds like she looks, like flowing skirts and a height below broad shoulders. A nose that looks freshly kissed every morning to match cheeks that are just rightly pink, as if it's law; as if there's no other science to it but to be swelled and dimpled for anyone and everyone to glance and subsequently trip at. 

Akino Mei has ten slender fingers with two slender palms attached to twin slender arms and chest and waist and legs and feet. Slender feet and slender toes in kitten heels and not at all bruised nor calloused nor ready to crack and stick in other people's noses like Sugawara secretly likes to do when he catches a certain someone sleeping on the floor when there's a perfectly not-so perfect bed just steps away so why does he always insist on napping on—

Hair, strands of bronze, if possible—he's positive it's an insult to just refer to it as 'hair'—flit in motion above her. It's frizz on any other head; missed tufts and rebels that defy gravity but on her they're more than necessary. They're character and substance to beginning, middle and more before conclusion. They are what remind the rest that, no, she did not fall from the heavens; no, _no_ , she is not carved from stone but was instead baked fresh from a four person family that lives in Aoyama-itchome who giggle and chat over dinner together every night without fail at an embarrassingly large table in an embarrassingly large home and that's close enough to being a-step-from-godly.

Akino Mei, delicate but defined. And not in the way that is "acceptable for a lady of her stature." No, no, fuck that, Sugawara thinks, and snorts but covers his nose because Akino Mei sure doesn't deserve that from (the likes of) him. Akino Mei, 161.1 centimeters thanks to a kitten heel is The Beauty of Campus. That's fine, she's accepted that surely but that is the exception, not the rule. It's a skill on her resume but won't be found under her name, not before her soon to be earned degree in engineering nor sharing a line with her breakneck tolerance for alcohol. There are things she is, with the swim club, with student council, with her guaranteed job offer. And then, after all of that and that not mentioned or kept flirtingly close to the chest, as it so happens, she has beauty. 

Despite what it may seem, from painstakingly plucked introduction throwing wrench through media res, Sugawara's never thought of any of this before. He's, in fact, talked to The Beauty of Campus-chan plenty of times without noting her laugh or nose or teeth. He’s never thought of how there's no mole on her face nor how her hair is neatly trimmed and not cut sometimes with a sudden itch for scissors from under the sink. Not haphazardly layered, jutting strands, stormy on a good day but status quo mucks of grey in the end. 

However, this time, as it so happens, when Sugawara finally sees her, Akino Mei is touching Iwaizumi Hajime's arm. She laughs.

Iwaizumi stills, eyes flicking just briefly to where tiny hand meets thick arm. Despite being a bench and a bush away, Sugawara can see the pink on his ears.

His arm shoots up, scraping at the bushes. He waves. "Akino-chan!"

Two bodies, complementing, natural, jump at his call. They're a bystander's wet dream of a unit. One plus two. Co-dependable, mother's darling and the son a father always wanted.

Two heads turn at his steps. "Suga-kun!" Bells chime back.

"Stop teasing Iwaizumi. You know he doesn't know how to socialize with humans."

Iwaizumi, predictably, bristles with no heat. "Yeah, yeah, whatever. Try some new material sometime."

Akino laughs. "Trust me, you wouldn't say that if you were in our seminar."

"Hah! Oh yeah?" There's a movement to his right, frantic almost, and Sugawara peeks at Iwaizumi to catch the remnants of panic before it disappears altogether. "What do you mean by that?"

"Well, let's just say he's plenty popular."

"Hmmm. Maybe they're blind?"

"All of them, Suga-kun?" Akino huffs a laugh, and Sugawara feels an itch behind his ribs. She turns slightly to catch Iwaizumi's gaze. "It's quite funny to watch."

"Yeah—no, it's," Iwaizumi coughs. "It's nothing, really." 

Iwaizumi leans, eyes locked to Akino. Glances lock, and there’s a laugh, simultaneous. Mutual and meant for two, not three. Inside jokes and chuckles too embedded to be shared aloud, lest they expire upon arrival. See your way out, Sugawara. 

"That assignment is a pain," Iwaizumi, shifting gears and changing angle. Dangerous territory clears to murky meadows. "I don't know if I'll have it done in time."

Akino huffs, hand on cocked hip. "You always doubt yourself, Iwaizumi-kun."

"Yeah, well, not all of us can get things on the first try."

"What—Hey!" Her ears glow pink. "I don't know what kind of image you have of me in your head, but I cannot get everything on the first try."

"...Right. Second try. Same thing."

Akino laughs and pushes his shoulder. Sugawara, stage left, looks on. Maybe, he thinks, if he slips back quietly on his feet and to his next class they won't question how he left with no goodbye. Maybe, he thinks, they've already forgotten he's there. The stone in his stomach grows, his throat tightens. Lovely. Cinematic. Predictably responsive.

Bells wrap in steady wind. Iwaizumi pauses. "Oh," he says, before reaching for her.

"Eh—"

Sugawara holds his breath as Akino stills. Fingers part curls, disappearing, to pull back as quickly as they'd wandered. 

And with that predictability, as knowing as the sun will rise every morning, Akino Mei turns red from neck to ears. 

Iwaizumi, none the wiser like the oblivious shit he is, flicks his fingers. "There was something in your hair."

"O-oh," says Akino.

"Oh," says Sugawara.

He laughs. Bells chitter. Stones sink, down to pits under terrifying dark. 

It's so predictable it's cinematic. It makes you want to ruin it. Courage, however, is for idiots willing to burn. 

So instead, Sugawara laughs. Fires nowhere to be seen.

2.

Later, when Iwaizumi pulls the hair from his face and kisses the back of his neck, he suddenly remembers how his fingers tangled in her curls.

He wonders what it felt like. Soft and weightless, almost like parting shreds of silk? Or full, curated, waves that pinkened his skin and bones and blood from hot nerves to petals and told more in a mere moment than any whispered words could—

His legs, locked back at the knees and brushing Iwaizumi's thighs to hover naked over his lap, slip against sweaty skin. He shakes at the strain, the position awkward and new but wanted. "Oof."

Iwaizumi pants into his ear, somehow hardening even more beneath him. Fingers pause in their stretch between his cheeks. "You okay?"

"Yeah," he breathes. The room seems dark despite the lamp by his bed. He shifts, sliding further on Iwaizumi's fingers and up his hips, and hums in approval.

Licking at his neck, Iwaizumi fits another finger between puckered skin. They hook and pull, searching, yet teasing. Digits much too familiar to be considered lucky in their movements, reaching for a coordinate of flesh that tightens Sugawara's knees and sends a cacophony of noises up his throat. Hook and pull, stretch. Thrust, stretch, pull. Circle. _Drag_.

Sugawara turns his head and mewls straight into waiting mouth. "Put it in."

"Wait." Iwaizumi nips at the web of his lips. "Not ready yet."

"No." He shows what control he has, or maybe wants to have, reaching down and beneath. He brushes past the hand curled in him, grasping Iwaizumi's length. Hips jolt at his own. "Come on. It's fine."

Iwaizumi sighs softly. The back of sweaty grey mop plops on his brow, snug with body melting to his. Fingers thick and wet slip down and out, knocking away Sugawara's fingers to rub at his own cock, lubing condom with what's left. Shaking thighs and all, Sugawara lifts his hips and most definitely doesn't think of how heavy he must be leaning back on Iwaizumi like this while he lines himself up and reaches back to spread a cheek. He doesn't think about what a poor sight this is, gangly legs and arms knocking around meaty glutes and chest and doesn't think a bit of what it'd look like instead with smaller hips and pin thin calves and dainty, slender toes that squeeze white when Iwaizumi finally slides in deep.

He breathes, chest shuddering, Iwaizumi adjusting him in his grip. He rocks his hips, hoping to dispel unwelcome thoughts with pleasure but it's a blood stain on white sheets. 

Iwaizumi nibbles at his ear and pulls Sugawara's thigh back even further to palm between his spread legs before he stills completely. 

"You're soft," he says and Sugawara almost falls out of his lap because he hadn't noticed himself. "Does it hurt? Let me—"

"No," he's as confused as he is but quicker to recover, angling his hips to thrust back down as he feels him begin to pull out. "Don't stop."

"Wait, just—wait. Are you—"

"Hajime." Sugawara turns, head pushing back on Iwaizumi's cheek to plant a kiss on his lips. "Shut up and fuck me, okay?"

Sugawara will always, secretly, pat himself on the back for being able to make Iwaizumi crumble in his hands. Petal in palm. Soft, pliant.

(Wrinkled and dead.)

"Here," he whispers, hands covering Iwaizumi's to pull away from his groin and crawl instead up his chest. One lingers, nails brushing at his hip bone, while the other fingers a nipple. Another kiss, this one convincing. "Touch me." 

Iwaizumi, falling for lips again, thrusts back. 

He's pumping with care at first, easing him, waiting it out. Stroking at undeniable softness above sure hardness that fucks Sugawara with too much control. And Sugawara, himself hiding erratic heartbeat and a runaway train of thoughts, pleads desperate with his body to be present.

But it's no use. He imagines nipple, as amaranth as his embarrassingly are but with pride and pulse, sitting on plump breast and spilling out of greedy hand. Wonders for too long to be called a moment what Iwaizumi would do if he unbuttoned his shirt one day to find him wearing a bra: something laughable at first, millimeter lace, unpadded but still as loud as a screaming train. Sugawara wonders if he would balk or pale. Or, he wonders, would he pause, leaning close, teeth bared at awkward silk–

It's a hard thrust up and he moans but not much of it is pleasure slipping from his mouth. He can tell from the shifting grip that now cages him in as well as from the curl of shoulders surrounding his back that Iwaizumi's growing irritated. He's mad at himself, most likely, at not being able to bring heat to Sugawara's body, left to finish all on his own. Sugawara feels something thick clog his throat.

With little left to gain, he finishes as quick as he started, soft groans accompanying stuttered strokes, buried hilt deep to keep in the heat. It's a surprise for Sugawara, and a first for both of them, coming just minutes from starting in contrast to many nights and a handful weekend days where they'd hold out for as long as they could, thrusting back at each other, and when that failed, hungering easily for one more time, another, last one, again.

Instead, Sugawara rubs at twitching thighs beneath his own, soothing, hoping to bore calm through touch alone. It's an awkward end to a heated start, Sugawara pulling Iwaizumi to bed from the moment they stepped in the door. And now, confused, concerned, they slip quiet to their sides.

Iwaizumi nudges forward, kissing him surprised. He's smothering but soft in his pursuit. Lips push at lips to give way and breathe into one another. Iwaizumi, still leaking despite restraint, questions with teeth that pull at Sugawara's bottom lip. He fights back the sigh that swells his chest.

But Sugawara, always quick to hide and deflect, giggles soft and breaks away. "What're you doing? I need to breathe at some point."

Iwaizumi ducks to brush teeth at his throat, eliciting an earned shudder. "I'm trying to distract you."

"From…?"

"From whatever…." He kisses him full on the lips, living in the pause. "...whatever you can't stop thinking about."

Sugawara goes stiff in his arms. It's a moment too late to recover for Iwaizumi not too catch, lines forming between his eyebrows but Sugawara figures the best he can do is kiss them away. And so he does, down his temple to nose to cheek, biting at pudge. Iwaizumi snorts at the effort but forgives nonetheless, that smiling frown teasing his lips. With that, questions left unanswered slip back under file, lock, and key. 

He shoves his knee between Iwaizumi's legs but sees him pull back before he can wrap an arm around his waist. 

"Wait," Iwaizumi grunts in his twist against Sugawara but the smaller won't budge. "The condom's going to tear. I need to throw it away."

But Sugawara's stubborn, nuzzling his nose against his cheek. "Well, you could feed it to me. That would solve the problem."

Olive eyes, half lidded, shoot open as he jerks back but red nonetheless. "...Uh—"

"I'm kidding! I'm kidding." He cackles soft, in the way that Sugawara can only be close to a whisper and still chuckle like a crow. His voice sings against Iwaizumi's lips. "Unless...you want to?"

"Sugawara. Stop being weird."

"I don't know how to tell you this, but. I _am_ weird."

Iwaizumi clicks his tongue. His fingers ghost over his hip. "Stop being weirder than usual."

He hums to hide his discomfort, ache in his chest sudden. He knows he shouldn't feel bothered at Iwaizumi's blunt status quo but can't help but deny when he hits straight home this time. 

"Not that weird," it's a reassurance meant for himself but chanced aloud between one another. Iwaizumi doesn't make to move but challenges nonetheless, forehead knocking on his own.

It's a heavy heat above them, blanket still knocked off the bed and two bodies very much left bare and cooling in the dark. Fingers brush from hip to elbow, down arm to grasp at his damp palm.

"What's this?' Iwaizumi drops to a whisper, as if knocking on glass. 

Sugawara pulls their hands up, gazing at where his fingers trace. There's light scratch running from back to palm. 

"I....don't know." He searches back, trying to place memory for answer. 

"No?" They both stare at the red. Iwaizumi's thumb rubs over in a trance.

"It—" and he trips, back to jutting hand from bushes to cut short pink ears and chiming laughs—"...it's nothing."

Iwaizumi thumbs it for a little longer, before bringing palm to his lips. He mouths along mar, brushing softly around the curve. Sugawara feels his eyes slipping shut, not prepared for such unusual tenderness. 

What's left of what he can see is occupied by dark eyes still searching. "You okay?" Iwaizumi asks for the second time, and second time already knowing the answer.

Sugawara swallows past dry throat. "Yeah."

He assures himself that it's not really a lie; when you're in denial it never really counts since you're protecting yourself from your own demons. But despite his three layers of skin and perfectly packed façade he knows Iwaizumi can see almost right through him. Almost. He'll hold onto that for as long as he can. 

He silently thanks Iwaizumi with a press of his nose to cheek. Eyelashes tickle at his own.

"Sometimes," Iwaizumi's quiet is something new to him. "it feels like you're a mystery to me."

Sugawara blinks slowly to feel the flutter against his lids. "Ditto," he whispers back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have so much respect for those who write whole works on their phones.
> 
> Sans computer and this took me an embarrassingly long time to finish...with more to come.
> 
>   
> Thank you all for reading.


	2. Chapter 2

3.

Sugawara decides that the best course of action is to avoid Iwaizumi. 

Quick strides past courtyards. Around corners and no shortcuts; can’t risk grey strands being seen nor catching olive eyes in a chanced glance. Sugawara is a man on a mission and that mission is cowardice. Thus, the Engineering department is off-limits until further notice. 

It’s unfortunately, surprisingly an easy effort. Sugawara had always been the seeker of the two, hunting the unexpected and finding him when Iwaizumi couldn’t care to be sought. “Do you have me on GPS?” he would mutter, but nestle in all the more closer to Sugawara’s leaning shoulder. 

He’s buried his intuition, navigation now moot. Sugawara is too scared to stumble upon something he doesn’t want to discover quite yet. 

(Maybe, in secret, Sugawara realized after the first week had passed with not a slight of contact, he wished Iwaizumi would find him. He’d chance upon him in his own hallways, looking unfamiliar and anxious in non-Iwaizumi grounds, while his chin dipped and swiveled in search of him. His eyes would scan bodies and the bustling before clicking to his, eyebrows jutting, target found and legs in pilot to his own. He would be, for once, the coordinate.)

Sugawara finds himself turning his phone off during class and well into lunch before clicking it to life with a jitter in his arms. He wouldn’t think anything of an empty inbox, no emails or calls after day two, or three, or five, or eight. These were observations that were concluded as soon as they became fact, and he’d bury his phone back in his bag just the same, hands none the less sweaty whatsoever. No tightness in his throat. No bells echoing between his ears, fingers in strands of silk behind his eyes. 

Denial. Denial. _Denial_ —

Sugawara attended classes and completed assignments after work and woke up minutes before his alarm could try to rouse him. Wash, rinse, and repeat. He cleaned his apartment and washed his sheets and didn’t think about how the last time he’d seen him Iwaizumi had kissed his neck and watched him from his perch on the bed. He felt his eyes on his brow, breaths paced to feign sleep, but pulse thundering in wonder as to what Iwaizumi could really see. Nails scratched at the hairs on his neck, mindless, unassumingly reading. Then, he had left. 

That Friday turns from the next to the following. It’s Saturday night and there’s a knock on the door. 

Sugawara crosses his apartment, rubbing his eyes. He opens his door as Iwaizumi brushes by without pause. 

“Wha—”

“Hey.” Tobacco and beer scent the entrance. Iwaizumi wavers, arm on the wall while he thumbs off his shoes. “Let me stay over.”

“O-okay. Did you,” Sugawara coughs, voice cracking. Why is he so nervous? He stares at Iwaizumi’s bent back. “Did you text me? Sorry, I guess I didn’t see it.”

“Mn. I didn’t.” Thick shoulders straighten and crack. Iwaizumi sighs, voice thrumming and full in those four walls, in the dark of twilight, in the cool of the stillness between them. 

Sugawara watches in silence. He’s not sure if he’s awake from his nap that had drifted into the night, watching Iwaizumi step through and around like he’s been there since the beginning. Like he lives here, returned from a night out to turn in, gulping water from the kitchen sink before pulling off his shirt to drop carelessly on the floor. Perhaps this isn’t all real. Perhaps he can bend his conditions a bit. But nails dig into his palms and he knows this all happening much to his pleasure and horror, and he inches closer with fear into his own home. 

Iwaizumi steps hazardously out of his jeans, one ankle, then two, socks to follow. He falls to the bed with a huff and slight bounce, back rippling, thighs plump under Sugawara’s gaze. Fuck. _Focus_.

Sugawara lunges over prone body to crawl between him and the wall. He uses the covers as a barrier, body adverse to heated skin. Heavy breaths fan at his hair as he stares abandoned into Iwaizumi’s face. Olive beads struggle to gaze: wet glass, pulled curtains. Sugawara fights the ache at his hips. 

“You’ve been drinking?” Sugawara’s voice is a murmur in the dark. Iwaizumi chances a smile. 

“Just a little.”

“Fun night, huh?”

Iwaizumi grunts, body adjusting. Sugawara feels fingers on covers over his side, touch still very much hot to his blood. 

“Just a club gathering…” he drifts, eyes lost in Sugawara’s own. He can’t keep his gaze, and it’s a first. He’s never one to falter, proud of his fighting tempo and desire to consume but Sugawara doesn’t know where or what he is anymore and especially when he’s around Iwaizumi. So he ducks his nose under the covers and hopes his ears don’t shine red through the dark. 

“...Akino, she said…”

His chin shoots up, heart gone.

Dark brows furrow in thought, or fight, with something deeper inside that Sugawara can’t read. Just fucking say it, he thinks, just get it over with. Let your voice swell and eyes betray you to show me how you really feel. 

But Sugawara’s starting to think that Iwaizumi’s done more than a little drinking as the words disappear on his lips. Smaller body inches closer nonetheless, pushing, masochistic at heart.

“Akino said what?”

Iwaizumi hums, sending shivers to Sugawara’s bones. “She said… something about you…”

“...Yeah?”

“But…” A hand brushes away grey strands that have fallen in his eyes. “Can’t remember… doesn’t matter.”

“...Haji—”

Iwaizumi leans forward and kisses him, sealing away the pain on his tongue. He tastes like chuhai and cigarettes, and for once Sugawara licks in the taste with fervor, betrayed by his body which missed him so. Defeat is taken in stride, optimist until death does he part. At least he can feel this body pressed against his once again, one more time, just yet still, before more of the ugly slicks out before them. So he fights with chapped lips and nestles into thick palms to take Iwaizumi in. 

Iwaizumi comes alive as thick leg lobs over to draw Sugawara in closer, teeth clicking without care. He shudders at the hand that’s creeped under the covers and his shirt to his back, now bowing, pliant under pinches and grasp. 

But suddenly Iwaizumi’s hand is inching lower and his teeth are on his neck and Sugawara’s feeling faint from the tightness of his chest and for the first time, he yanks away. 

“Sorry—” He pants, but the breaths do nothing for the vice grips his ribs have on his lungs. What is this? It’s like his body is folding in and small until it could be gone. His vision blurs and Iwaizumi hovers with urgence. 

“What’s wrong?” He can hear how Iwaizumi fights to be sober but still skids in a haze beside him, confused and startled. 

Sugawara pulls his breathing, focusing in, letting the dark consume. Fingers disappear from his back and cheek and he’s once again alone, millimeters from Iwaizumi but lightyears inside himself, pace descending to a lull. His thoughts have once again corroded his body. Wrench thrown into his physiological state. A step closer to ruin. 

Sugawara opens his eyes, flicking on Iwaizumi. He’s waiting, in confusion? In irritation, almost? The lines on his face are new and terribly unreadable. 

“Can… I don’t think I can do it, tonight…” 

Iwaizumi slows his breath, letting the pause between Sugawara’s words sour into the night. “Okay?”

Sugawara looks away, insides shriveling. He inches closer to the wall, further into the bed. If only he could melt into the sheets. “I’m just… tired, that’s all.”

He hears heavy body teeter on elbows, before lowering down. “Okay… ah, okay.” Iwaizumi, unexpectedly, sounds embarrassed, but Sugawara can’t confirm for sure with his gaze locked tight to the bed. His pulse sounds loud in his ears, must be audible to the maybe-interloper next to him, and he digs his hands into fists to punish his own wrongdoings. 

The bed shakes as Iwaizumi flops and turns, concludingly, settling at the peak of finale. It was the beginning of silent heartbreak, waxing poetic on bulbous back that Sugawara found when he finally looked to Iwaizumi. Two bodies, far and untouching on a cramped bed, quick to silence over screaming questions left stitched shut. Sugawara was being selfish, he knew. But he, for once, lacked the courage to solve the problems at hand. He didn’t know why. Or, he refused to know why. 

4.

Sugawara has been awake for a while but doesn’t realize it until the back his hand plays on deflates with a deep sigh. 

His fingers draw lines and loops on taut skin before him, around a lingering mole near shoulder blade, to sign figure eights into the dip of his back. Iwaizumi, like the many nights before that he’s done this, is dead to his dreams, unaware of the gestures, but still mumble at his ministrations. Sugawara, heart always jumping incredibly fast, chances his luck with this routine every time. 

He knows, the one time Iwaizumi catches him in this act, that scowling face will drain of color and jump from the bed and out the door, never to return to this apartment. 

5.

Sugawara awakes to a brighter room and teeth on his shoulder. Iwaizumi’s pressed into him, hard on his lower back, hand tickling up his chest and under the shirt. He fights the sirens sounding off in his head. 

He feigns ignorance, escapes under the guise of stretches and pops to his joints and moaning a morning greeting before sitting up and away. 

Iwaizumi looks on from below, sideways. His hand sits limp in Sugawara’s lap. 

Sugawara fights under his gaze to maintain blank stare. “I’mma make breakfast.”

He doesn’t wait for an answer in fear of furrowing brows and instead steps out of the bed and to the kitchen. He hears Iwaizumi sigh before he slides from the covers into the bathroom. The shower creaks on. Sugawara swallows around tight ribs. Always tight. Always on edge. 

The day is spent in wait. The impending question, the inevitable break, nip in the windshield ready to fracture and shatter with the final bump in the road. And it does, always. Inevitably, eventually. 

They linger around each other, in circles during breakfast barely touching under the table, and for hours that escape them watching programs on the shitty television Sugawara forgot he has. He looks through an assignment and asks Iwaizumi if he has any work to do, innocently, hoping to pressure him out the door, but the body lounging on the ground and toeing at his thighs just grunts and flips through the channels. Sugawara feels tight ribs closing in. 

Nip turns into crack. 

Sugawara swallows a laugh at something said during the show. 

“Can’t believe you’ve never seen this,” Iwaizumi glances from the corner of his eye, head propped on hand. 

“Egh, I didn’t watch a lot of TV growing up.” Sugawara scribbles something on the paper. 

“Yeah, you said that before… still, it’s a pretty popular show.”

It’s some well-known game show, Sugawara knows at least, highly watched for even when he was in grade school his peers would come into class giggling about the guests' antics and jokes but he was never able to join in their folly since it was just his mother and himself in a two bedroom apartment that didn’t have a TV after the first one had a bottle thrown at the screen—

But Sugawara doesn’t think about those memories anymore and just settles with his taped responses on repeat. He fights the itch in his throat. “Yeah, well. Never found anything I liked on.”

Iwaizumi scratches at his head. “As usual. You’re so weird.”

Sugawara slams his hand on the table. Iwaizumi jumps. 

“Could you _stop_ calling me that!” His papers crinkle under his palms but his hands are shaking so much he’s too afraid to lift them. “So I don’t do the same things you do. So _what_.”

Iwaizumi sits up, confused. “Sugawara—”

“Don’t call me weird just because you don’t—” Sugawara pauses, swallowing words ready to be purged, fighting the fractures. But they’re spreading too fast. “Don’t like... things, or, whatever.”

He ducks his head, shrinking in on himself at the table, disappearing under his hair and behind his eyes and deep into the recesses of his head. But Iwaizumi shifts up and stiff until he’s pulled his legs far away to a defensive stance across from him. 

His voice, always sharp but somehow this time more piercing, cuts through the TV din. “What is going on with you?”

“I’m sorry,” Sugawara says, soft and distant. “I just don’t like it when you call me weird, sometimes.”

“No.” Sugawara feels a cold run through his skin. “This is about something else.”

“No… it isn’t.”

“Why are you lying?” He jerks up, eyes, locking to Iwaizumi’s hard gaze. Unreadably angry. What does he know? _What does he know?_

Sugawara scoffs. Squirms in his spot. “I’m not _lying_.”

“Yes, you are. You’re hiding something.”

“What—what would I have to hide?”

Iwaizumi scrubs a hand through his hair, hissing a sigh. “I wouldn’t know because you’re not _telling_ me.”

Sugawara laughs, nervously, to clear the tension that won’t budge. Iwaizumi narrows his eyes, fuming under his retreat. “Okay, well, I think you’re just overthinking things—”

“Stop running away!” His voice is a loud ripple in Sugawara’s body, stilling fidgeting fingers and clenching his jaw shut. 

Iwaizumi’s standing over him now. His fists are clenching at his trousers. “You think I wouldn’t notice? That you’ve been acting different.”

Sugawara feels his eyes tighten. He’s craning up and shaking under Iwaizumi’s anger. “I’m _not doing_ —”

“You’ve been avoiding me for the past couple of weeks. Don’t act like you haven’t. I don’t know if I did something or said something but I can’t help you if you don’t tell me—”

“Why do you care?”

And they pause, like opponents before a fatal strike, Iwaizumi with shock at the response and Sugawara with horror at the words that have slipped from his mind to his throat and out, but remains still and clear at knowing that this now must come to an end. 

“What…” Iwaizumi shifts in his stance above him, hands unfurling. Sugawara’s own dig deeper into his palms. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“I mean, why would you even care? This isn’t,” Sugawara grips at his chest, thoughts garbling against each other. “This isn’t something you really care about. Not like I do. I mean… this whole thing is just… it’s just another _thing_ to you, or a hobby, or… I don’t know…”

“I don’t understand what you’re saying.” Iwaizumi’s loud to his own lost tone, impatient and demanding. “You’re not being clear. What ‘thing’ are you talking about?”

“Our relationship!”

Iwaizumi stills, color draining. There it is, Sugawara thinks. He almost wants to smile at his hypothesis being proved right. 

“...Sugawara—”

“Why should I always have to be the one in the wrong? Whether it’s because I’m too close to other people, or because I’m not telling you everything or because I _love you_ —” and the words slip out before they can be caught but it’s no secret between him and Iwaizumi but more of a burden for the latter and Sugawara’s eyes glass over at knowing so. “Why do I have to put in all this effort ? Why _am I_ putting in all this effort when you won’t even do the same? When you don’t even feel the same way that I do?”

Iwaizumi shakes his head but steps back, away from Sugawara’s kneeling form. “You don’t know that.”

“Then _say it!_ ” He yells, eyes wet to Iwaizumi’s own distant set. “Why can’t you just say it?!”

Iwaizumi jerks his head back, gaze slack and mouth gaped at Sugawara’s state, his cheeks shining wet and shoulders curling in from his seat on the floor. And Sugawara feels like he can see himself through Iwaizumi’s gaze, a gaze that he can finally understand as _disgust_ and he, too, feels it from the desperation that fuels his demands. 

“I’m sorry,” Sugawara concedes, having already fallen on his own sword. He breathes out long and wipes at his face. “I didn’t mean… not like this…”

“Sugawara…” He thinks Iwaizumi sounds pleading but his gaze is to the floor and he realizes he’s read him entirely wrong when his shadow steps further out of sight. 

He hears his bed sigh and creak and looks to see Iwaizumi sitting on the edge with his head in his hands. Sugawara’s ribs, vice gripped on his insides, hurt with every beat inside. This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen but the course of events, as they are, were inevitable. The show is almost over. 

They sit in silence despite the TV and Sugawara fumbles for the remote to click it off with some fury. He sniffs and wipes at his nose to keep his mind blank, to focus on the heat of the sun on his knees and not how Iwaizumi sits so still years away across the room. 

Sugawara doesn’t notice he’s moved from the bed to the table until he sees his feet in his vision. 

“I should go,” Iwaizumi says.

Sugawara nods. Coward. The both of them. “Okay.”

He watches toes clench before stepping out of his gaze. He wonders what Iwaizumi would’ve done if he’d grabbed onto his trouser’s leg, gripping the fabric in a last minute plead. But the thought has barely grown legs before he hears the door shut from the entrance. 

Sugawara chews on the inside of his cheek. He turns the TV back on to watch the program and cries. 

6.

Sugawara finds this intermission refreshing, at the least. He doesn’t know, however, that it is actually just the intermission and thinks of it as the end, an epilogue for the chorus, a final word or two of tragic romance that was predictably unrequited from the start but wholly entertaining from beginning, middle, to now. 

He arrives to his classes on time and works his shifts at his part time job at the cafe down the street from his college and jerks off a lot. A _lot_.

It’s three weeks before he realizes that there are new parts of his routine that replace the old. That paths that he used to take now seem more pointless and dreary than tempting and bring a flutter to his chest. Not anymore. 

He sees Iwaizumi once during this time. 

It’s three days following The Darkest Moment in His Adult Life (with emphasis on “Adult” considering Sugawara was an abandoned child by the age of 14 and halfway through the realization of his homosexuality) when Sugawara’s back at the other side of the stupid bush with his hand sweating around his phone when he saw him under a walkway, puffing on a cigarette, laughing at something a friend says to his side. He’s half turned, hand in his hair, unguarded, at ease. There’s no lines in his face, no sharp set to his shoulders.

Sugawara pocketed his phone, turned around and walked away. 

Sugawara finds this intermission refreshing because he’s not aware he’s been breathing so shallow under some imaginary gaze he thought was on him until he’s joining back in with his other friends. He goes out for a drink with Onoda and Keichi and the like, catches lunch with more than just himself, checks his phone less. Doesn’t delete numbers, fingers his hair in thoughts of maybe getting a trim or starting over—Onoda blanching at the idea of Sugawara getting a buzzcut—doesn’t put stray shirts and socks and shit in a box in his closet because that seems a little petty and much like he’s bottling things up because he definitely is not (anymore). 

It’s all a little tiring, but he’s better. Right? Right. 

Sugawara’s flicking through his assignment at a table one afternoon when Akino Mei finds him. 

“Suga-kun,” bells clang muted in the library still, but there’s more to it than just the necessary quiet. “Can we talk?”

Akino Mei, campus wonder, looks tired. Her hair is still kept and curled but she shifts, aimlessly, twisting at her hands before Sugawara’s seat. 

“Uh, sure,” Sugawara says, pulse pounding like it hadn’t for the past three weeks and he shoves his papers in his bag to stand and follow the smaller, quaint, better body through the doors and out to a rarely taken path. 

The colors shift in his eyes and Sugawara feels like nothing from the past few weeks has changed, like he’s just gone from that Sunday sobbing on the floor to this spot under shade across from the beautiful woman who would take the only thing he ever loved. His body takes back that heavy cape, makeup on, curtains before his eyes. The intermission has ended, house lights hot from their flickering. 

They sit under a tree on raised brick, in silence, in awkward wait. Akino Mei rocks nervously beside him and it’s an action that feels like a contradiction, but Sugawara remembers that Akino Mei is both that and not, merely a 21 year old functioning slab of meat that shits and sleeps and cries and gets nervous just like the rest of them. 

But right now what she is, is she’s not Sugawara. 

“There’s something I have to tell you,” she says, and Sugawara breathes even, despite the sweat on his skin. 

“Okay.”

Akino takes a deep breath, and clenches at her skirt. “I know about you and Iwaizumi-kun.”

Sugawara takes a sharp inhale, but doesn’t look at her. He stares at the shadows of the leaves that sway above them. “Okay.”

They sit, and the wind that slips through the tree fills their silence to rattle the branches and provide the ruckus that’s needed. 

“There’s something else,” Akino stutters, and pauses. She tucks her hair behind her ear, and Sugawara looks to find her face blotched in red. It’s sort of funny, in a way. “There’s something else I need to tell you.”

Sugawara keeps his gaze on her profile, heart in his throat. “Okay.”

Akino clenches her skirt tighter, eyes flickering. Her lips are pressed white together and unmoving and Sugawara knows the words won’t come out so he says them for her. 

“You slept with him, didn’t you?”

She flinches, hair swinging in frill as she finds his gaze. Her face is a telling red and sweats despite the shade and cool gust. 

“Ah,” Sugawara says. He laughs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has actually gone somewhat differently than I expected. 
> 
> I absolutely detest cliffhangers. I have a lot of nasty thoughts about them that are more deprecating than critical, but I think it was necessary here to emphasize how far they had strayed at this point. 
> 
> Please let me know your thoughts on it all. Once again, I thank you all so much for reading.


	3. Chapter 3

9\. 

It gets colder.

There’s brisk walks between buildings. Grey skies bring grey scarves and more wind and less chats in courtyards. No echoing laughs off concrete; no lingering from class to train to bed. 

In this Final Act of the Rest of His Life, as he deems it, as he sees for he consequently feels it, Sugawara hustles behind cardboard scenery to don a new cape and makeup fit for favor. A new mask but a sharper, impatient audience. 

In his Final Act, Sugawara cuts his hair too short. Onoda almost cries. 

The presence of almost no tufts comes with a practiced sheepish grin and cold ears. Goosebumps are ever present not only on the back of his neck but on the curve of his forearms when he hears a name he’s sure to not know anymore. 

He is both damsel and knight, conquerant of rise in his throat and questions about his decisions. Secluder in inquiry; Etsuo who saves him a seat when he’s late crossing campus catches a new side of Sugawara when he asks him about “that guy you always hang out with, isn’t he dating that girl—”

Sugawara says a tinge loud, “We’re not that close of friends.” 

There’s a brush of a sigh, and Etsuo feels embarrassed when he sees the pull in his jaw. “Wouldn’t know,” Sugawara adds, and tucks away hair he’s forgotten is no longer there.

The mask, knocked astray, is quickly fixed. Sugawara waxes a smile. The audience, human in the face of mistake, forgives. 

6.

In the shadow of the shade, the laughter grows from passable disbelief to uncomfortable. It’s uncomfortable, at least, for Akino Mei. 

Sugawara curls over in his guffaws. It’s not hyenic, nor gigglish. It’s embarrassingly raw, not to mention almost taunting, and Akino’s shoulders tighten. 

“What is so funny?” She asks. 

He pauses, finding her stare, and bowls right back into harder laughs. Akino can’t help but let her irritation grow to clench more roughly at her skirt. Still she sits, waiting with no inclination to storm off; she has caused this and must be responsible for the consequences. 

The wind picks back up and bends them both with the trees. The laughs quiet but still gurgle in his throat. “I’m sorry,” he wipes his eyes and shakes his head to fight it. “I’m sorry. I don’t know.”

Akino shifts in her seat. “...What does that mean?”

“It means— _I don’t know!”_ Sugawara shoots up to lock her gaze. Gritted teeth turns his smile into sneer. “I don’t know what you’re expecting me to say. Want me to cry?”

Akino’s mouth opens and closes, eyes wide. 

He laughs, this time entirely souring. Shadows pull along his face as he angles her way, leaning in. “What was your goal in coming here? In telling me this?”

“Suga-kun, I—”

“How did you think I would react? Hm?” 

Her mouth slams shut. It’s clear there’s more steaming behind her lips, hands squirming for unknown purchase in her lap. There’s something she must say, stammer before his mania boils over to rage. But she is, for the first time since she was a child, a time when she would lie about pulling a boy’s hair at school and be cornered with a red face, ashamed. 

She sits, small child cornered by Sugawara’s misery that he denies and shapes as inevitability. Playscript written, fate as it comes, small footnotes overlooked time and time again out of ignorance, or, fear—

His face slacks, to her surprise and relief that turns to a glassy chill that drops in her stomach as she watches the way his mouth fights a shake. 

“I knew this would happen.” It’s said with a blank stare and sloping shoulders and Akino bites her lips. “I saw the way you looked at him, and the way he looked at you.”

“Sugawara,” she starts, head shaking, “You don’t—”

“I _know_ how he feels, okay?” 

Akino, in a moment of stupid desperation, reaches for Sugawara but he slaps away her hand. Her lip trembles but there’s no lowering his tone. “I’m not going to sit back anymore and pretend like this shit isn’t crumbling all around me. It’s already gone. These past four years— they’re gone.

“We both entered this fucking tunnel,” he starts. He turns his palms up, watching them tremble in his lap. “Same fucking darkness, not knowing where to go or what to do, just going with what we could feel. But I think somewhere along the way, he crawled his way out. And in all that darkness, I never knew he left.”

Sugawara grips his hands to fists and snuffs out a laugh. “I’m not sure why I’m telling you all of this…” 

He continues anyways, Akino leaning closer to hear his voice that’s drifted so low. “I guess I thought that, at one point, we’d be able to find some way through all this nothingness together. I came in skeptical, scared of what he could do to me, how he could hurt me, this boy who had only thought of girls all his life, and then suddenly I was in love with him and I thought— I thought he felt the same. In some stupid illusion, I thought he would claim me as his as I did him. But I’m starting to realize that would never happen.”

Sugawara exhales and tilts his head back. His eyes are closed against the shadows of the leaves, strickening patterns across his skin. “I’m starting to realize that I blamed him for being in that tunnel. If he didn’t want this, why didn’t he leave me? If he did want this, why did he never—” 

The wind picks up and at first, Akino thinks she’s lost his words to the gust but watches his eyes flicker open and eyebrows furrow. 

Her hands release her skirts. “Why did he never…?”

He doesn’t answer but shakes his head after several pulling breaths. “Why did _I_ never… tell him?”

“Tell him what?” She asks.

Sugawara rocks his head forward. “...Everything.”

10.

Onoda sneezes. “I’m freezing. Let me borrow your hat.”

“What? No way.” Sugawara veers away on the courtwalk. “Stay away from me.”

“Come on, you don’t even need it.”

“Says you. But it’s been cold for, like, six weeks already now.” They weave between static groups of classmates chatting in the rare sun. “Get used to it. Plus, today’s a warm day. Live in it. _Breathe_ it in.”

Onoda scoffs. “Says the one wearing a hat.” He swipes off Sugawara’s cap and earns a yelp and dodge in return. 

Sugawara stumbles into the path of several girls, who jump and let out some noise at his near knocking. “Sorry!” They giggle in their arms and scuttle past, Onoda sheepish and Sugawara’s smile melting plastic. 

They fall back into a lazy step, Sugawara’s hands clutched over his skull. “I’m not used to the cut yet. My ears are cold all the time.”

“Yeah, and you look ugly now. Gives some of us a chance—” Onoda bends and coughs under an elbow to his side.

“Shut it. It’s really not that bad.”

“Uh, whatever you say.” Onoda pulls at his own hair. “It’s almost shorter than mine. Who gets their hair cut right before winter, anyways?” He leers, knocking his shoulders at Sugawara’s. “Did someone break your heart?”

“Hardy har.” Sugawara brushes past his musings and reaches for his hat but his stomach drops to his feet at what he denies but is absolutely true. “Just needed a change, that’s all.”

Onoda stretches the beanie between his fingers. “Get some new shoes, then. Go running. Or join a… club?” He scratches his head, voice distant as they split between walking passersby. “Can you join a club this late? I don’t know if—”

“Onoda, I’m fine, really. It was just getting a little long!”

“You needed a change, or, your hair was too long? Did your scissors slip?”

“Okay, mom—”

“Hey.”

Sugawara steps back to stop before wide shoulders. He’s a little out of breath, chest pumping softly under his jacket, breaths hot steam between them. 

7.

“I hadn’t realized until maybe, a couple of weeks ago,” there’s a drawl in his tone, words slipping out like sand through the loose seams of leveed bag. “No… I guess, I guess it was really only a few days ago.”

He drifts to silence. Akino waits, still but pulse frenzied beside him. 

“...That I’m always thinking about what people might say or do if I say something wrong, or do something wrong, or be someone they won’t like. I know that’s hard to believe—” Sugawara pulls at the fabric on his chest. “—I know I— I come off as someone who’s carefree or does what they want but, I’m…”

The shirt twists in his grip. Eyes crumble shut. 

“I’m just hiding.”

11.

He’s surprisingly not as frightened as he thought he would be when he did finally run into Iwaizumi, since his last discreet spotting some Tuesday four weeks and three days and odd hours that’s too embarrassing to admit he knows long ago. There is a hammering inside him that hurts Sugawara’s chest, yes, and he’s sure his face has gone from bitten red to pale, but Sugawara is not, in any way possible, scared. 

Iwaizumi still huffs in place from catching his breath. Eyes flick to the top of Sugawara’s head to his own gaze and back. “What…”

Thick eyebrows flicker from restless to sharp above slate eyes. Sugawara catches his thumbs run against the pads of his fingers, fighting to curl. 

Iwaizumi is angry. 

Onoda, in his own blessed ignorance, brightens. “Iwaizumi! Haven’t seen you in a while.”

He doesn’t answer. Sugawara himself has all but forgotten that Onoda stood to his side, his own attention taken by the vein climbing up Iwaizumi’s neck. He can’t help but see the man before him as something strange— a being that has aged into a considerably different figure. Like the skin he’s in is not his own, but weathered through cold winds and chiming bells and softer hands that have now rekindled calloused fingertips. His hair is longer, Sugawara notes ironically, amusingly (from his peripheral because he’s not sure he wants to reckon with that look in Iwaizumi’s eyes). There’s a line of white, raised skin dipping under his chin; a weeks-old nick from shaving? But it’s a little deep and completely foreign, and Sugawara slowly comes to the conclusion that there are things he may never know about Iwaizumi again. 

In the silence that his comment sours, Onoda flicks a glance from Iwaizumi to Sugawara. His friend has gone noticeably still, and the jest that once quirked his smile had disappeared. Instead, Sugawara looked almost ready to shake, and to Onoda’s shock began to shrink away. 

“Uh, so—” Onoda continues on, the heat of discomfort both building up his back and empowering him to save Sugawara from whatever Iwaizumi’s presence had triggered. “We’re about to go meet up for a group dinner, if you’d—”

“Onoda.” 

Onoda jumps silent at Sugawara’s odd tone. “Yeah?”

“I’m not going to be able to go tonight, with you.” Sugawara finally chances Iwaizumi’s glare. His throat is dry. “I forgot I had something to do.”

He swallows, for once not upset at Sugawara’s consistent dodging of plans and relieved to find an out to whatever this was. “Okay,” Onoda says. “I’m gonna head out.”

Onoda had always known he was more to the left of oblivious than most. But he liked Sugawara, and considered him one of his closest friends since coming to university, and in turn filed away a good amount of his mannerisms and habits and dislikes. Onoda grew to learn, and keep to himself, that Sugawara would try to distance himself in seemingly minute ways when it came to peculiar topics. He knew Sugawara was careful to never talk about his childhood, whistling around middle years and maybe skinned-knees and deflected professionally on his love life. But most of all, Sugawara almost never talked about Iwaizumi.

Iwaizumi Hajime, in the corner of friendship occupied by Onoda and Sugawara, was not a thought nor a conversation but a placement. He had only come to know of the brooding plus one months into his meeting Sugawara, when, crossing a patio overhang midconversation, Iwaizumi had stepped before them both in awkward interruption, much like now. However, instead of the frightened look that currently consumed Sugawara, a soft light had passed in his eyes. Onoda saw and continued to see Sugawara give a shy smile that he would reserve for Iwaizumi.

Despite the strange affection, Sugawara was always too careful to not speak of Iwaizumi. Only in reaction, or when Onoda or their mutual friends had brought forward his name, but never by will and never with vigor would he speak of the solemn man who would flick his ear at a rowdy comment or would trail after him somewhere silently agreed upon, mutually smiled at, shoulders brushing in perfect accident. 

Iwaizumi to Sugawara was an attachment; a limb used so unconsciously that only when found in a scenario without it, Sugawara might be immobilized. Onoda could never understand it, not until right now, as Iwaizumi looked down in fury and Sugawara up at him in pain. Onoda walks away, ears reddening and heart beating fast at what he couldn’t quite come to terms with just yet. 

Sugawara, eyes becoming glassy under Iwaizumi’s stare, looks around. “Iwaizumi, I—”

“I’ve been looking for you,” he says and steps forward. Sugawara fights a step back. “For weeks, I’ve been trying to find you.”

Sugawara wishes he could bristle at his tone but knows he’s not made it easy. When he left Akino in the wind under those trees so many weeks ago, he pulled out his phone, deleted and blocked Iwaizumi’s number. He was too angry to consider an alternative, too torn to seek him out. 

He watches Iwaizumi clench his fists, shoulders almost hunched to his ears. “I’ve been walking around this damn department, trying to figure out where you were and I didn’t even realize—” he scoffs and Sugawara's throat clogs at the way he looks from his hair and back to his eyes. “That I had no idea what to look for.”

Sugawara notices the sweat at his hairline and the way his coat collar is pushed up and wrinkling on the side. He looks surely out of place, like he’s never stood on this walkway (which he hasn’t) and Sugawara remembers he’s always wanted this, for Iwaizumi to find him when he would not, but not what it comes with— the images of other places filling his mind of where he’s been that he shouldn’t have, with stained lips and nail marks and skirts petaled on the floor. Sugawara feels hot claws burn in his throat.

Iwaizumi either doesn’t notice the way Sugawara’s eyebrows clench or doesn’t care. “What the _hell_ did you do to your hair?”

Sugawara grits his teeth. “What’s it to you?”

“So, what, you’re just going to cut me off, like your— fucking— hair?” He struggles to maintain a lower tone. A couple steps a wider path around them on catching a word or two. “Going to pretend like I don’t exist? Just another thing to bury—”

“How dare you.” Sugawara shakes his head and Iwaizumi stills. “How dare you.”

Iwaizumi shifts a step back, eyes flicking around Sugawara’s face. There’s no need to explain, nothing to confirm what Sugawara knows that isn’t already written in the tremor in his jaw. Iwaizumi’s shoulders lose their peak. 

“After what you did,” Sugawara says, “After everything you’ve done, you’re mad at _me?_ ”

Sugawara is a being of denial. It’s a blessing to be skeptical, not of promising paths but doubtful of the dark and depths of the worst. He doesn’t want to believe why Akino sought him out, and files it as a lie. But Iwaizumi flicks his eyes away and Sugawara feels his insides drop. 

The anger that held Iwaizumi’s frame deflates. He passes a hand over his face and Sugawara shudders a breath. “Sugawara, I—.... I’m sorry.”

Iwaizumi looks up and Sugawara, in turn, looks away, knowing that whatever he sees in Iwaizumi right now will convince him to forgive and forget as he’s done before, and before, and will again. 

He blinks away the wet at his eyes and settles with half a nod. Pull out the sword, cauterize the bleeding, bandage the wound. 

Sugawara turns, steps to go, but a hand shoots to catch his arm. “Wait, please.”

He’s never heard Iwaizumi plead, and almost reddens in embarrassment. “Let me go.”

“I don’t want this to end.” Sugawara thinks he heard those words wrong but Iwaizumi’s stepping closer and drawing more eyes to their position. The sun is hot in the chilly wind. He doesn’t seem to care. “I don’t want to— not like this.”

It’s hard not to make a scene when it’s already forming, and Sugawara settles with the frustration lumping in his throat. “You’re so unfair.”

“Please, just listen to me—”

“—I don’t want to do this. Not here, not— no.” Sugawara swallows a sound in his throat. “I’m done.”

Sugawara thinks Iwaizumi has conceded as he feels the grip on his arm loosen. But, to continue a streak of horrifying surprises, suddenly his hand is hot in a much bigger palm and he’s being pulled down the walkway, past wide-eyed classmates and buildings and towards the street.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So,
> 
> This has taken me quite a while.
> 
> I have been writing this chapter for a little over a month, and before I knew it, it had become a goliath of turns with the end very far from sight. 
> 
> In order to let the content breathe separately on its own while getting it out without further delay. I've decided to split it into two.
> 
> The second and last part will (hopefully) come much sooner than later. Thank you very much to everyone who continues to read on.


	4. Chapter 4

8.

“What are you hiding?”

He shifts and his eyes slide open to Akino. He blows a laugh. “Shouldn’t it be obvious?”

She frowns. “No.” 

“That I like guys?” He tries. “That I prefer dick over breasts? That I take it—”

“Yes,” Akino interrupts, red and squirming. “But isn’t it more than that?”

Sugawara hangs off her question, fingers loosening from his shirt. “...Is it not enough?”

“It’s not that it’s not enough,” Akino measures her words slowly under his gaze. “But, that you’re hiding something, even under all of that?”

Sugawara narrows his eyes. They waver in the silence, one in confusion, the other in limbo after inquiry, letting the wind hold their thoughts together. His eyes widen just slightly, and Akino catches the moment he locks back into himself, realization too raw to bear. 

He leans away. “I don’t know.” It’s a lie that can’t be covered. “I don’t know.”

12.

Sugawara’s shoulder hurts. 

“Where are we going?” It’s the second time he asks but this time his words come out low over the rumbling of the train. 

Like before, Iwaizumi doesn’t answer, but readjusts his grip on his sweaty fingers. It’s a bit crowded for early evening, an hour before rush hour, and Sugawara can feel the eyes on their joined hands. He’s already attempted to tug away silently but the body that holds him hostage only tugs him close enough to feel hot breath on his nose. 

There’s no excuse for them to be this near each other; despite the crowded train, there’s still hand rails to cling to and space by the doors. Their state is a familiarity only frequented by chatting young girls who can adjust each other’s hair and pull the other’s arm without a glance their way. It goes without saying how common it is to see boys in the same position. 

And Sugawara is, admittedly, with reminder, a coward. Despite the masks and sword and cape and makeup, he shrivels under the pressure. Those are just characters he plays, deceptions on stage. He’s glad the cold has forced the layers on his skin to hide the red that’s surely crawled up his chest but there’s no hair left to hide the heat of his ears.

For the most part, Iwaizumi is unaffected. He looks out the door window, face set and eyes distant, only flicking over to catch the crown of grey tufts as if to make sure he’s still there and not just carting around Sugawara’s yanked off arm. 

He’s almost irritated at the lack of Iwaizumi’s shame in contrast to his own building amount. He knows there’s nothing wrong with this but can’t help but feel the whispers helping pull his hand free. Was this not the man who couldn’t kiss him until his apartment door closed shut behind them? A man who struggled to say—

They go three stops, Iwaizumi pulling Sugawara nearly to his chest each time the doors open to let commuters through— or maybe, to keep him from bolting— before he drags him back off and back out into the cold. 

It’s through the gateway and down the stairs to small residential streets. The din separates, train clattering behind them as Iwaizumi hustles them at a brisk pace. Sugawara’s always lived in walking distance from his classes and before that, only traveled the opposite direction than they were to Karasuno. He wasn’t one to visit friends, always finding excuses to keep his distance, and couldn’t say the last time he’s ventured away from the shoddy area he calls home. The houses here were plentiful but quiet. There wasn’t trash amongst straw-thin alleyways or neon signage blaring through windows. The corner market’s doors are pulled open in the light; a shopkeeper gives a polite smile around his cigarette as they pass around. But his dimples flatten and head tilts when he catches their hands.

They turn another corner and it’s a memory forgotten until now when Sugawara realizes he has been here before. Several steps down, there’s a house with a forest green roof and windows that reflect white in the sun that lofts over a parting wall. It’s not much different than the others, Sugawara recalls, and it probably isn’t as towering as it was when he first saw it when he was three times as small as he is now. 

He remembers waking up one day, sweating in the nondescript summer on scratched tatami mats and his mother, on one of her good days and on one of her days off, a phenomenon that would never occur again, woke him with a toe poke to his belly and a smile.

“Get dressed,” she said. “I want to take you somewhere.”

He changed his clothes and found her at the door with his shoes in her hand, donned in a baby blue sundress and her brown hair loose under a wicker hat. She looked like a young, carefree woman, with waves in her hair and a brush of makeup, not a tortured girl with all the wrong responsibilities and none of the help she needed. She looked like a mother with her son’s hand in her own. 

They crossed under stilted shops, even traveling in a few times just to wonder at the twists and curves of mannequins. She loved the book store— even though he hadn't ever seen her read one— and they would separate momentarily, him into the bright colored shelves of children's tales and her to the walls of thick novels. He peeked over, watching her grab a book from the shelf, and stare at the pages inside. Sugawara couldn't understand why he would feel sad when he watched her, eyes blank and tracing the characters on the page, flipping randomly to the back and front and through. 

They hopped off and on the train, him mapping their journey via small fingers pointing out the seat window at colors and lines and structures that caught his eye. They walked until their feet were tight in their shoes, collars wet with sweat, and walked some more, through quiet neighborhoods and past small shops before they turned a corner and came across the house with the green roof.

He remembered his feet began to drag, and his mother’s too, seeing him crane his neck at the heights above the wall. They stood under the shade of the tree that creeped over, looking at the reflecting windows, birdsong soothing summer sorrow. 

“It’s nice, isn’t?” his mother asked. 

Sugawara stared up at the cream walls. “Yeah.”

She breathed in deep, blinking slowly as if to shift dimension and time with the flick of one’s eyelashes alone. “I always imagine another life, where we would live in a big house just like this one.” Her words are lofty and drag, attempting to be light, but Sugawara only feels the same sadness that he felt at the bookstore. “I’d cook dinner for you after school, and before bed we’d take a nice, hot bath.”

He giggles at the thought of his mother cooking, and she giggles too, at the thought of it all— the fantasy of a comfortable life. It was the first time Sugawara felt like he belonged to his mother, standing in front of that nice house and sharing a nice dream, and the only memory he’d keep with him when she was gone. 

Iwaizumi drags him down that path, towards the tall house with the green roof, and stops to unlock the gate. 

Sugawara digs his feet in the walkway, pulse tearing through his throat. “ _Stop._ ”

Iwaizumi pulls towards the door but Sugawara puts his weight in his heels. “What?”

“What is this?” His eyes dart around— catching the broken branch at the base of the tree in the garden, the door in the shadow, the hedges at the windows— “where are we?”

Iwaizumi stares at him, silent at his sudden fear. “This is my house,” he says, and walks them both to the door.

13.

It’s neater than he thought it would be. 

The bed covers are pulled back most likely from crawling out of them hours before, but there’s no clothes on the floor and only his desk remains haphazard with open notebooks and crumpled papers. A volleyball sits behind his bed frame. He can imagine he probably tosses it as he lays in bed, brooding male in character and action. 

He’s trying to take in the details, tracing light streaks from the slits between the curtains to connect to the knicks and knacks of the room. Anything to fight the hysteria building in his chest.

Iwaizumi stands before him. Sugawara flexes his hand, now free and cold from the drying damp yet feeling foreign out of Iwaizumi’s grip. With his back to him he can’t see his face, but something tells Sugawara that they’re both lost in this space. 

He struggles to exhale. “Your parents...?”

Iwaizumi shifts, like he’s just remembered he trapped Sugawara in this room, and turns back. “Not here.”

There’s a strange turn to his lips, and Sugawara wonders if the door is locked. 

He’s tired of this show. “What do you want with me?”

Iwaizumi’s eyebrows draw close. “I…” 

“Well, you’ve had plenty of time to think about it.” Sugawara scoffs. “If you’re done wasting my time, I’m going home.”

“Wait—” His hand comes in reach, but this time Sugawara’s too quick, slapping it away. He manages a grip on the handle but Iwaizumi arms the door. “I’m— you can’t leave.”

“Move, Iwaizumi.” He no longer feels the fear holding him hostage but the fury he’s been waiting for corrodes him deep. It burns his skin and stiffens his neck, wishing nothing but pain on the man before him. Hateful curses swarm his mind but sit under his tongue, so close to resorting to petty jabs but the tremor in Iwaizumi’s hand holds him back. 

“No.”

“Move!” Sugawara wrenches the door open but Iwaizumi slams it shut with his hand.

“I can’t.” It’s a plea leaving Iwaizumi’s mouth, and Sugawara almost removes his hand. “Sugawara…”

“Just fucking say it, Iwaizumi!” 

“I’m _trying,_ dammit!” Sugawara jumps at the volume but Iwaizumi only scrubs at his face. “You know this is hard for me.”

“What is that, exactly?”

Iwaizumi gestures. “This! This. …Telling you... things.” He squeezes his eyes shut.

Sugawara searches his face. He lets go of the door handle. 

Their distance is minute but thoughts the furthest away they could be. His body felt like it was twisting in this room, nauseous in its weightlessness and colliding with the intimacies of a life he didn’t know. He caught his eye on a picture on the desk, glare protecting the faces. There’s some figurine Sugawara couldn’t place right next to it. 

He slides along the shelf, eyes catching something green and he shoots away, blood shirking.

His fingers cover his eyes and the tremor still remains. It’s unnerving for Sugawara, who couldn't understand why Iwaizumi pleaded so desperately, why he continued this strange, fruitless charade. Sugawara was so, _so_ tired of it. 

“I’ll start,” His throat is tight. Iwaizumi’s hand slides down his face, eyes opening. “Is it true?”

Iwaizumi cocks his head just slightly. What could he be confused about? Sugawara wants to laugh. What else could he be talking about? 

“Is it true,” He tries again. “That you slept with Akino?”

The body stills, just slightly. Iwaizumi’s eyes widen. A stiff shell passes over his eyes and slights his face, the same look that consumed his face when Sugawara sat at his feet in his apartment all those weeks ago asking for what was the opposite of Iwaizumi’s own truth. 

Sugawara thinks this look is devastation. 

There’s no blurring of his vision. The tears that had been threatening to fall all this painstaking time were finally, safely leveed. Sugawara had known this answer for weeks, had read the ending to the script well in advance. It still hurts, yes. Reality was a weeping sore; no turn of remedy to cure it. Only bandages to swatch and cull. 

( _Bandages, left too long to infect and rot._ )

Iwaizumi, face shuttering, looks down. He grips the fabric on his chest. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

Sugawara watches the man before him, once so broad shouldered and brusque, become small in his keening. He doesn’t want to be confused by the pain that Iwaizumi seems to be in, and doesn’t want to linger on what it means. 

“This is over, then?” The question has double finality, over this trapped interaction and whatever remains between them. “We’ll end this.”

“No.” It’s a sorrowful note from Iwaizumi’s lungs. Strange things are happening to Sugawara, in the sight of his undoing, in the colors of the green knotted threads on his shelf, in the four walls he thought he’d never see. 

“What don’t you understand about this?” He swings his hands before them, palms to the ceiling. “Isn’t this what you wanted? An out?”

But Iwaizumi only narrows his eyes with a twitch of his mouth. “‘An out?’”

“What else would this be? Why else would you do this? You have been a coward—” the word sears his throat and Iwaizumi fights a flinch. “—from the beginning, not telling me what you really want. This— _this_ — was your way out.”

“No,” he says again. “It was a mistake. I made a mistake.”

“A mista—” Sugawara blows a laugh hard and this time Iwaizumi shoots his head up. “A mistake? Fuck you.”

The floor creaks under Iwaizumi’s feet, sliding back softly. There’s pain in his eyes. Sugawara feels nauseous. 

He shakes his head, grey hairs nonpresent. “A mistake is getting off at the wrong stop. Or pronouncing someone’s name wrong. Not fucking a whole other person.”

“I didn’t know what I was doing!” It’s a burst to tempering pipe and Sugawara shuts up at Iwaizumi’s unraveling. “I was angry at myself, and at you— and I know I shouldn’t have been angry at you but I just felt frustrated at everything you wanted me to say when you yourself wouldn’t tell me anything. Anything that was bothering you, or anything about _you_ , you wouldn't just _tell me_.

"It felt like you were always trying to hide something from me." Iwaizumi rakes at his hair with both of his hands. "It felt like we were playing some game. Like I had to guess every single fucking thing on your mind and one wrong step you'd retreat further into your head."

"That's not true." Sugawara shakes his head, mouth agape. "What are you talking about? I always told you anything you wanted to know."

"You told me anything _you_ wanted me to know." Iwaizumi eyes him and Sugawara feels his heart at the skin of his chest. "I could tell you were picking and choosing words, Sugawara. Always really careful not to slip up about, fuck, who knows what.”

Sugawara feels his own hands take a tremor. 

He looks away, to the opaque picture frame to the light of the window. Nothing helps to untie his throat. "Is that why you did it, then?”

Iwaizumi leans in his peripheral. “Sugawara, no—”

“Are you saying that I drove you to seek out someone else? Because I didn’t write my whole life down for you?”

He’s now blurry in his vision as Iwaizumi steps closer to block his view. Iwaizumi shakes his head and Sugawara grits his teeth. His tone comes out foreignly soft, like a parent correcting a child wronged. “I’m not blaming you for what I did. I… was an idiot. I can’t explain why I— why we…” his voice cracks. “...I wish I could take it back. But, I can’t. I know that. I know.”

Sugawara holds back as much as he can. "That's right." His lip curls. "You can't." 

Iwaizumi reaches for Sugawara's forearms in some reminiscent purchase, but catches himself, palms frozen in air. 

The action is enough offense to Sugawara, however. "What are you expecting out of this?"

His eyebrows jump. "What?"

"Are you looking for forgiveness?" He snaps. "You're not getting it from me. Not ever."

"You're not listening to me." Sugawara can tell Iwaizumi's struggle to hide his frustration.

"I am listening to you." He says, exasperated. 

His face pulls tight. "Are you dodging this on purpose?" 

"What are you even _talking_ about?!" 

“Just tell me what you’re hiding.” This time, Iwaizumi does grab a hold of Sugawara. His arms bruise under desperate hands. 

Sugawara can’t hide the quiver in his voice. “I’m not hiding anything!”

“But you’re lying, Koushi!” The tears finally spill from his eyes but Iwaizumi is too wound in his frustration and shakes Sugawara. “You call it what you want, but we both know there are things you won’t tell me. Why won’t you just tell me? _What—_ ”

Thoughts and memories and imaginations rattle around inside of him, ripping out reason. He searches for the words that will overwrite the ache he feels when he hears the pain in Iwaizumi's voice. But they’re gone. He’s a glass looking empty that’s filled to the top. He’s overflowing. 

“Because!” He yells, and Iwaizumi stops. “Why would I tell you anything if you’re just going to leave? You’ll leave like everyone else. Can’t I protect myself? Is that such a bad thing to do, to not give you my all if you’re just going to disappear?”

Sugawara wipes his face and sighs. He’s surprised at the unclenching of his ribs. It’s a kitsch realization, the release of tension from carrying something so compromising for a time long before Iwaizumi was even a thought in his mind. This was Sugawara’s last and only crutch, hidden under fine tuning that seemingly had a loose thread. 

He can only stare at Iwaizumi’s mouth in these moments, parted and still. “Even when I was ready to, I couldn’t do it. Not when you didn’t even accept me.” Iwaizumi looks ready to interrupt but Sugawara only quickens his words, louder in the room. “You didn’t, Hajime. You were always too scared to be close to me, not only in public. Even when it was just us.

“I know it’s not fair to put that all on you.” Sugawara takes a shuddering breath. He can only imagine his face, face wet and nose beginning to run but Iwaizumi hasn’t looked away. In fact, his own lip clenches to fight a tremble. “I was scared, too. I’ve never… wanted to be with someone as much as I wanted to be with you. I loved you. I love you.” He drops his head. “I was too scared to be greedy. I didn’t want you to run away if I clung too close or made things too obvious. So I shut up and followed your lead and didn’t say anything, just so that you wouldn’t abandon me like everyone else.”

He lets out a wet laugh. “Clearly, It didn’t work.”

He’s still gripped tight in Iwaizumi’s hold, and it’s hard to feel cathartic in the little space left between them. Iwaizumi shakes his head through the silence.”How would you know?”

Sugawara meets his gaze. “What do you mean?”

“How would you know? That I would ‘abandon’ you or whatever like everyone else?” Sugawara can hear the hurt in his tone. “What makes me the same as everyone else?”

“Oh, come on. Even from the beginning you had always been unsure about being with me.”

Iwaizumi scoffs. “And you? Were you always so sure? Even from the very beginning?”

“...Well, I—”

“You’re constantly holding us to different standards.” The anger in them both builds again, pupils wide and eyebrows set. “Why do I have to be the only one who is definite in everything?”

“No one is saying that!” Sugawara feels like heaving. “But it’s different! It’s different for me.”

“And why is that?”

“Because I’m gay, Iwaizumi,” Sugawara bellows, and to his surprise Iwaizumi doesn’t flinch. “And as far as I know, you’re just confused.”

“Don’t say that!” 

Sugawara jumps in his grasp.

Iwaizumi tilts his head up as if to keep his emotions from trickling through. It makes Sugawara’s eyes burn. Why does he look so stung? 

“I’m not confused.” the words come out watery and Sugawara feels that tightness in his throat once again. “I’ve known what this is, since we started this. If you’re saying these past four years I’ve been living in some kind of state of denial, you’re _wrong._ ”

His grip lessens from Sugawara’s arms only to hold the corners of his neck. Unsteady breath heats his cheeks and Sugawara’s eyes can only see Iwaizumi’s own, foreheads mashed close. He doesn’t like this at all. 

“I know who you are, Koushi. I know my feelings for you.” The words are murmured and warm Sugawara’s ribs and this is going completely off script and he’s trying desperately to not fall for whatever this is. “I—”

“ _Don’t say it!_ ” With desperation, he claws at Iwaizumi’s hands. He needs to leave. He has to go _now_. Hearing those words now, in his blubbering state, thick as a feather and strength all but disappeared, will surely end him. “I don’t want to hear it anymore. Please don’t say it—”

Rough thumbs brush away the tears at his cheeks.

“You don’t mean it. You don’t—”

Lips shut his to smother his words, swallowing all his control in one go. Sugawara sinks to the floor, legs gone, Iwaizumi with them.

14.

His nose itches. He fights from scrubbing at it. And his eyes sting like hell. He’s not sure he’s ever cried more in his life than he did in the past month.

“Not even when my mother left,” Sugawara mumbles into the pillow. 

Iwaizumi peaks up, blinking on the innocent invitation. “Your mother? She… left?”

“Yes.” He feels odd, a little mechanical, in talking about this after all these years. He’s never told anyone this, so he’s not sure how the words should sound together. “It was a long time ago.”

“When you say she left, did she… die?”

Sugawara hums a no, burying himself further into Iwaizumi’s eyes. “I think I was 13… or, 14.” He thinks back to that apartment, with rackety doors that wouldn’t slide well and the leak in the ceiling in the kitchen and how he could hear every creature and beast and man through the walls. “She worked nights and had a string of boyfriends, and sometimes she wouldn’t come home for days on end. A couple nights went by, and I realized she hadn’t returned.”

Sugawara closes his eyes, the deep setting cold from that time returning in reminiscence. A couple nights turned into four, then two weeks. He remembered, sitting at the table until the early hours of the morning when she’d usually come home, hoping to catch her come stumbling in and for once wishing she would spit nasty curses in his face like she always did.

“I remember I went into her room to look for anything and—” he laughs, but Iwaizumi only frowns harder. “This whole time, it was empty. Completely empty. All her clothes were gone. There wasn’t even trash in there.” He opens his eyes. “The only thing left was some cash in an envelope. No note. Nothing.”

They let silence pull the words, more sorrowful for Iwaizumi, who couldn’t imagine being left alone in middle school with a couple thousand yen and nobody to call. 

Iwaizumi swallows, weighing his words. “Where is she now?”

Sugawara scrunches his eyebrows. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” A foot toes at his ankles under the covers. “You don’t want to know?”

He dips back, eyebrows arching. “Why would I want to know where someone is who was trying to escape from me?”

“You don’t know that. Maybe she was just trying to protect you.”

Sugawara stills, suddenly pushed into archives of times compartmentalized long ago. Men who would force him out overnight or slap him around or touch him where they shouldn’t while his mother played privy to their wants. A woman, burned by no love and no money who’d scream to sobs and smash their belongings and wish him dead again, and again, and again. Soft hair and hands that would hold him tight, nails itching soft at his scalp, words soothed into his body on strange nights when he couldn’t recognize this delicate woman as his mother. 

He cuts a sardonic smile to Iwaizumi. “You’re so naive.”

Iwaizumi shifts, but doesn’t back away. “I’m just saying you shouldn’t assume she left because she didn’t want you. Maybe she had reasons.”

Sugawara shakes his head in a questioning daze. Iwaizumi tugs his sleeve between his fingers. 

He’s not sure he likes the light in Iwaizumi’s eyes, and can’t place the weird feeling clawing up from the depths of his stomach. “I don’t… know if I can talk about this, right now.” He burrows further into his pillow. 

Iwaizumi nods. “Okay.” He brushes at his hair, scratching at his scalp. Sugawara leans into his palm.

15.

Fingers tug and scratch for purchase among his tufts later while he rides Iwaizumi slow and sweet. 

“Think it’s too short?” He pants. 

His hips hit dip in their thrust and Iwaizumi grunts. “I’m starting to like it.”

“Liar.” Sugawara grins. He swings back, balanced on his hands to thrust at better spots and deeper heat. He’s tight around his cock and more than ready to come but he wants it to burn, just a little longer. 

The thick hand slips from his hair to drag down his ear, hooking a thumb at his mouth. Sugawara sucks at it shamelessly, lost in Iwaizumi’s face shuddering at his change in position. 

Iwaizumi loosens his thumb from his mouth to tweak his nipple raw, cupping his chest, marring the small pudge of muscle. Sugawara doesn’t know why instead of bringing him pleasure it brings something sour to his tongue. 

“Wish it was longer?” He continues, forgotten anger bubbling back up his throat. “Maybe wavy, and brown.”

Iwaizumi’s hips, having started to stutter a bounce against his own, lower at his words. “What?”

He shifts his weight on one hand to grip Iwaizumi’s grasp with the other, pressing hard into his chest. “Or maybe thinking if this was fuller, hm? More perky. A little more something to hold onto—”

“What the _fuck_ , Koushi.” Iwaizumi sits up and moves to push him off but Sugawara only slings forward to crowd his face.

“I’m just saying what we’re both,” He slips a moan, still sliding around his length, Iwaizumi still hard despite his protests. “Thinking. That you wish I was someone else right now.”

“No.” A hand slaps to his neck to push him back. “ _No._ Do not bring her up right now.”

“You know it’s true. Why deny it?” He chuckles, sounding manic. Iwaizumi stiffens. Sugawara teeths the tip of his ear. “It’s what you want.”

The bed creaks and his head hits the wall for a moment as Iwaizumi flips him to his back. He could almost come from the crazed look in those eyes burying him into the mattress, but instead bites around a smile. 

“You don’t speak for me.” Sugawara loses the grin on his face. Iwaizumi grips his chin, yanking his face close and hard. “I’m only thinking about you, okay? I love you.”

Sugawara slaps him. Iwaizumi swings with the movement, but still crowds over him. 

His palm stings. What did he do? What did he just do? “I’m sorry,” he grips his hand to his chest. Iwaizumi looks at him, stunned. “I’m sorry—”

And yet Iwaizumi kisses him anyway, teeth clacking at his own as he slips in and rams him into the bed. The wood creaks and Sugawara moans apologies and something knocks off his desk from the shaking of the frame. 

“I love you,” Iwaizumi says into his cheek, into his hair and mouth and neck. Sugawara doesn’t believe it. He shouldn’t. He won’t.

16.

He’s crying again, but this time Iwaizumi is too and Sugawara hasn’t uttered a word. 

“We had been out for a club gathering,” Sugawara can’t see his face too well now that the sun has crept away and gone to leave them in the sober evening dark. “And I had missed a train and she offered to let me stay at her’s.”

Iwaizumi doesn’t want to tell this story, but Sugawara has pushed him to a corner with guilt and self-loathing to make the words spill before them. “We drank some more, and we were talking about something, and she brought up you again.”

Sugawara sniffs and leans in, confused, but Iwaizumi continues. “She had brought you up before— a couple times, actually. I thought she liked you. But then I realized she knew about us and, so, I told her.

“I told her I was scared that you were bored of me,” he coughs and laughs, thinking back on it, and Sugawara couldn’t imagine thinking any of that in the first place. “And that it felt like I was losing you already. And she asked me if we should stay together and…“ He shudders. Sugawara fights the shiver in his shoulders. “And we started kissing, and things… things happened.”

Iwaizumi pulls him closer with a hand brushing at his neck. “I’m not saying this had anything to do with you. I fucked up, all on my own. I know that.”

“But I pushed you to fuck up.” There’s no strength in his words. Sugawara lets his thoughts slip from heart to tongue. “That’s what you’re saying.”

“No.” He shakes his head. “I was a coward. I ran away and used you as an excuse.”

Sugawara chuts a sob, Iwaizumi pulling him in. He smells just as he did all those months ago, and for a moment, he imagines those nights they’d lay in his bed just like this, ached and near dead to all but themselves. 

“Why couldn’t you say it?” he asks into his neck. “Why couldn’t you just tell me sooner?”

Iwaizumi sighs shakily, and Sugawara’s too scared to see his eyes. A hand gets lost in the little strands he has left.

"It felt like I didn’t know who you were, sometimes." Iwaizumi takes a breath, words full in his mouth. "How could I say I love you, when I didn't really know who you were?"

17.

It’s moments from dawn when he finally awakens.

He sits up, careful to let Iwaizumi’s arm slide off his shoulders. He leans over to look out the window. 

Tree branches, gnarled with age yet still thick stretch poetic an arm’s length from the glass. It must be pretty to bloom in the spring, a window worth opening to let petals get stuck in your hair and sheets only to sweep up with some mirth. 

Sugawara smiles and Iwaizumi grunts in his sleep. He inches off the bed. 

Narrow fingers thumb at the photo frame on his desk. It’s Iwaizumi, bronzed in the summer and jubilant child arm-in-arm with Oikawa who he faintly recognizes, both sporting dialed-up smiles and dirt on their shirts. It’s a cute photo, and a memory too cinematic for Sugawara to reason with. 

His fingers drag down the pane, etching dust streaks. He picks up the green bracelet at its edge. 

It’s his bracelet. He knows this, because his mother made it for him, before he could piece together age and time, and there’s only one like it. His mother liked knotting and weaving and creating strange things with her hands, but sometimes it seemed like a secret he wasn’t allowed to speak aloud but only wear on his wrist through the threads she tied on herself. 

“Don’t lose it,” she whispered into his pulse. “It’s my love, for you.”

But he did, but he couldn’t remember where or when and at the time he hid the panic that had sprouted in his chest and threw it away just as fast. Why should he feel guilt at losing something she already threw away? Why did he feel as if he betrayed her? He didn’t want to reckon with it, as always, as even now, when his eyes well up with tears he thought he didn’t have left. 

He sniffs and blinks them away. 

He pulls at the knots with his nails, eyes flicking to Iwaizumi’s bare back. Why does he have it? After all this time, it’s been sitting here, in his room filled with comfort and wear and trophied amongst his knick knacks and pictures of his childhood. Why?

But his back won’t answer his silent questions. It rises amidst the blue light, shadows painting it calm. 

Sugawara dresses quickly. He stares at that broad back, grabs the bracelet, and walks out the door. 

It’s easier than he thought. All this rewritten, cut and slopped for a different act but the same ending, nonetheless. Sugawara burns away words whispered at his ear and pockets those hours in Iwaizumi’s arms for another rainy day. 

Come in a year, or a few months, or now, this would all end. It was as sure as death, no alternatives to his epilogue. Sugawara was fine with this, had been preparing since Akino sat him down all those weeks ago, and steeled himself for where the ripples might land in the aftermath. 

It was as sure as death. Iwaizumi, as much as he believed he loved him, would buckle under the pressure of averting eyes and unforgiving bodies. He’d feel his heart swell for something softer, to catch his eye on what he was used to. He’d fall in love once again and for good, with a woman who’d love him back, with a marriage and a child and a rosy red life all tied tight and right for them all. 

Sugawara would be okay. He was as sure as death. He’d weathered worse, sold his body to survive, lost his friends and pride and purpose before and again and would once more, most likely. He could, and would endure. 

It was as sure as death. 

But there he crouched, under the steeping branches on the other side of the wall, retching into his palms. 

“Fuck.” He took a breath, only to sob harder. “Fuck.”

All he needed to do was walk away. He was almost there. The gate was shut, but the shadows of the tree swayed on his hands and he looked up to see that green roof once more and suddenly he was turning to grin at something his mother said but his mother wasn’t there. She had left him and Iwaizumi had left him, too. If he sought him out, wouldn’t he just run away again? Sugawara couldn’t harbor the pain of sure rejection, couldn’t face the reality of what would come to search for a woman who never looked like him and only loved him sometimes. Not again. This time, he'd run for good. 

Sugawara shudders, fights back his heaving, and erases them both from his mind. Interwoven, inseparable, nonlinear. Iwaizumi has pried open a box long since expired. But he’ll shove it all back away— him along with it. 

He stands up, takes a deep breath, and walks on. He turns the corners, passing the now shuttered corner market still closed for another hour or so. He tugs at his hair, pulls at his jacket. Shakes off the tremor in his palms. 

The bracelet slips off his wrist. He stops and tuts, picking it up and tying it tighter, but instead, the knotted end snaps.

He stills, watching it slide back off and to the ground. He laughs. 

There’s hurried footsteps behind him. He’s wandered too far from his lines. The ending is changing—

A hand grabs his wrist, yanking him close.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FINALLY.
> 
> Thank you so much to all who read. I'll be editing and cleaning up after a few more readthroughs, but please let me know what you think. I appreciate you all sticking through it until this unfated end.
> 
> Feel free to ask for requests or any questions via my [Tumblr](https://partknachklamm.tumblr.com/). Always willing.


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